


This Unavoidable Thing Between Us

by Clarice Chiara Sorcha (claricechiarasorcha)



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Intercrural Sex, M/M, Pseudo-Incest, pre-movie canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-25
Updated: 2012-11-25
Packaged: 2017-11-19 11:57:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/573017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/claricechiarasorcha/pseuds/Clarice%20Chiara%20Sorcha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Loki then slips between him as he might slip between worlds, a silent shadow that exists simply because the sun does: there can be never one without the other. A startled indrawn breath marks Thor’s only audible response, his eyes wide and as uncertain as the half-drawn fingers against his trembling palms. But it is not for his pleasure, it is for his own good.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>And if Loki takes his own pleasure in that, why, it is but due payment for service rendered.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Unavoidable Thing Between Us

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Inver](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inver/gifts).



> So, I am fortunate enough to be tumblr friends with some extremely talented folk, and we were having a conversation the other night about the terrible dearth of intercrural sex fic and pictures in this fandom. It's a stone-cold kink of mine from way back, and I decided that I simply HAD to give it a whirl. Now, I have a particularly dreadful habit of writing drabbles on tumblr that never make it to AO3, but given the sheer _length_ of this fic and the fact that I really do wish to dedicate it properly to the artist who inspired it, the wonderful [hadeshorn](http://hadeshorn.tumblr.com/), I just...well. Here it be. <3
> 
> Loki is a little shit, by the way.
> 
> ...but then I guess that's standard around here.
> 
> The title comes from [this Evermore song](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5K7-GZOIhk); while it doesn't suit the tone of this fic all that much, it does sit well with my general view of those two damned idiot brothers. Er.

It begins with smoke and the acrid scent of spelled incense upon the air, the lines of his casting ruined entire when his oaf of an elder brother quite literally stumbles into his demesne. One hand shoots out, though hardly to steady the fool; instead his fingers wrap about a flask, rescuing the distillate within from an ignominious death upon cool stone floor.

“Out.”

Thor’s face remains set in resolute demand. “I require your aid.”

“I am otherwise occupied.” Setting the flask back beneath the twisted iron apparatus, Loki points to the door of his alchemical chamber with the other. “ _Out_.”

“You are the only one I can speak to about this matter.”

“I do not doubt it, given your bosom companions are fit only for hitting things with blunt objects, slicing them all to ribbons with the nearest blade, or skinning them alive with nought but the edge of one swift tongue.” Unmoved, Thor simply shifts position in Loki’s door. In answer he raises an eyebrow, adds with acerbic finality: “Or then there is always the option of just devouring the thing whole, inedible or no.”

A faint smile twitches at his lips, vanishing but a moment later. “Loki, please.”

Though Loki does not doubt that Thor had meant to be forceful, as is his long habit, the slightest hint of a wheedling plea has entered his tone. It brings to mind the memory of a small golden-haired boy, tugging at hand and elbow and wrist, fluting voice always crying some variation upon: _the sun is shining, brother, why not leave these dusty books and spells and come out with me?_

With a sigh, Loki gives over to the inevitable even as he furrows his brow, looking back to the complicated series of flasks and tubing that snake through the twisted supports of iron and silver. “This is a delicate experiment. I really haven’t the time to speak with you. I will come to your chambers later. After nightfall, perhaps.”

It is a concession indeed, given the moons shall rise in shorter time than he truly would desire for this particular distillation. As always it is never enough for the golden prince of Asgard. A petulant hand flashes out, and with the action of but one thoughtless moment the end flask falls to the floor. Glass shatters with a tender sigh, and Loki snaps around to face his brother, every muscle tensed for war. “You _fool_ —”

“You shall have to begin again,” he interrupts, smooth and purposeful as his great arms cross over his greater chest. “But later, yes? Because you have time sufficient to speak with me now.”

In some ways it is not even the actual egocentricity of the act that has Loki’s temper igniting to full blazing flame. Rather, it is the way Thor’s voice resounds with simple satisfaction, as if this is but the way things ought to be.

_Yes, and you know better than anyone else that perhaps that is the simplest truth behind every lie you ever told_.

Not that it stops Loki from launching himself at his brother, the full weight of even his slighter form taking Thor low and hard in the abdomen. Harsh impact jars through flesh and bone alike though as he curves into it, forcing a startled Thor down to the floor beneath him. The other’s back hits stone hard, all air escaping him in a punishing _oomph_ ; Loki’s own breath is coming hard and yet is perfectly controlled, his eyes fierce blazing heat as he closes his fingers hard around the working throat now within his reach.

The face above twists with abrupt fury, and blunt fingers reach up to dig hard into wrists currently without habitual vambrace; such armour is entirely too cumbersome when Loki is merely about his laboratory work. Of course Thor is in full armour, though this configuration is more casual than entirely functional. Loki takes it as no disadvantage. He is light and he is quick, and every time Thor tries to roll them over to retake the upper hand Loki throws over again: swift moving chaos wrought as a coiled mainspring of potential energy not yet released, for all the manic grin he wears upon his face.

The struggle ceases only when they are bunched up against the wall, Loki straddling his brother’s hips with hands fisted in thick collar. Thor tilts his head, but the characteristic potent pride of his usual grin is gone. Instead he chooses to play the innocent, all blue eyes and downturned wide lips, a puppy chastised for no reason by a beloved master.

“Please?”

Loki doesn’t bother holding back a bark of sharp laughter, eyes skipping sideways to the blossom of broken glass and lost labour just beneath his worktable. “Why should I?”

While his brother’s gaze moves to the broken flask, Loki’s has returned to Thor’s face; he can glean now some shame there, though then Thor has often regretted his temper long after the time it might have been useful to do so. “It…will make you laugh.”

“Oh?” But more than the words it is the sudden uncertainty in his brother’s lowered voice that has him leaning forward, fingers loosening to slide to armoured shoulder as he leans close, voice all coiled confidant’s whisper. “ _Do tell_.”

Thor’s face remains yet turned away. Even though he snorts, Loki’s victory is marred by the flush now beginning to creep up his cheeks. “You spend time with mother in the healing wing.”

“Upon occasion.” Loki frowns; even Thor does not generally have a penchant for so stating the obvious. “Though it is not my true interest or speciality, as a general rule.”

“You spend time with the midwives, also?”

With a great shove that send only Loki backward, given Thor’s back is already to the wall, Loki throws his hands in the air. A moment later he rises to his feet, spinning on one heel in high disgust. “Oh, _Thor_ , whose belly have you swollen?”

“No-one’s!”

The indignant shout has him turning, hands fisted even before he realises his own reflexive reaction. “Then why the need to come to _me_? If no scandal has yet taken root in some poor maiden’s fertile soil after you’d ploughed it to germination, then speak to Mother. She is far more knowledgeable than I.”

“I would rather Mother not know of such matters.”

Thor’s words had been stiffly spoken, and Loki curls a lip about his own reply. “Between Heimdall, Hliðskjálf, and the fact she has been _your_ mother for far more years than she likely cares to count, I am sure she is quite aware of any dalliance you might think you have the skill to conceal.”

Having regained his own feet and a smidgeon of his usual arrogant dignity, Thor tilts his chin high. “I have no wish of another extended conversation upon the subject of a prince’s duty and responsibility when it comes to…the sowing of his seed.”

As a prince himself, such gestures have little impact upon Loki. “And you believe I am incapable of doing much the same? I, who have been schooling you in etiquette and court manner since before we both even knew what it was?”

He does not even bother with a cajoling tone this time, simply choosing to look at Loki as if he cannot imagine his brother having anything but the heart to say yes. “ _Please_ , brother.”

The vulnerability of his own self to such coaxing should anger Loki more than it does – and yet the action enough blunts the sharp blade of anger. And it is sheathed with the gratification of knowing that Thor, for all his great honest heart, gives such earnestness to few.

“Such spells and charms are not my speciality,” he murmurs all the same, almost uncertain in his own self, “and if you are so concerned with a prophylactic you will wish for the best.”

“But you are the best!”

Even as some part of his heart swells with near-brutal satisfaction, his lips twist in wry grimace. “Which is why you destroy my things.”

This time he does at least have the grace to look honestly abashed. “I am sorry.”

“You always are after the fact,” he mutters, and as Thor opens his mouth wide to protest Loki permits him no further audience. “Thor, speak with Mother. If you truly will not, speak with Eir, or one of her other ladies. They shan’t be surprised at your need to prove your virility, believe me. You already have, half a thousand times over, if the wenches from here to Álfheimr and back are to be believed.”

Thor is quiet for long enough that Loki believes he has won the argument. Then, a wretched expression seems to quite tear his face apart. “Loki, I cannot sire a child.”

“Yes, Father would have your head and Mother your bollocks.”

With a violent shake of his head, Thor slams the base of one fist against the wall. Despite the distance between them, Loki’s body stiffens, resonates with the weight of it even as Thor givens him a haunted look. “It is the child I worry for,” he says, and his face falls to the floor. “I just…a bastard might never be heir to the throne. This I do understand. But even then I could not let a child of mine be raised without its due place as blood of my blood, as bone of my bone.” When he fixes his gaze upon Loki now, he seems half a child himself, demanding of a parent that the monsters in the darkest deepest places of his chamber are not real after all. “Brother, _please_. Will you not aid me in this?”

The act of denials drives a deep blade into his heart, for all he gives a careless shrug to match his words. “I simply do not have the knowledge.”

“Can you not gain it?”

“I could. But it would take time.” His eyes drop down, narrow as they take note of his brother’s crotch. “And would you be able to keep that in its place while I do so? I should think not.”

“ _Loki_.”

“Don’t look at me that way.” Irritated now, Loki crosses arms over chest and purses his lips. “But if I might offer you some advice? The only way to be sure is to not lie

with them in such a fashion at all.”

“Spill on their bellies, you mean?”

“No, there’s still opportunity enough for it to take with every moment you keep your cock in a cunt, even if you pull out before you’re finished fucking your pleasure from her.”

For all the bawdy flyting he’s heard from his brother’s lips, Thor seems taken aback by such easy crassness. “Loki!”

With eyes rolled skyward now, Loki gives over to his silvered tongue, letting it drip with rich hot scorn. “If your seed is near enough, potent enough, it will take root and blossom into a flower destined for a garden far beyond the walls of this palace.” But he cannot help the wicked grin as he sets his palms against the thick wood of the near bench, lifting himself with effortless grace so he sits light upon its edge. “No, brother, best you lie with those who are not fertile ground, should you wish to be certain.”

“Ladies beyond their childbearing years?” he asks with furrowed brow, and Loki’s smile curves crueller, deeper yet.

“No.”

He can very nearly pinpoint the exact moment realisation dawns in his brother’s startled gaze. “ _Loki_ , that is…”

“…entirely dependent on how one views the matter,” he says, taking up his brother’s trailing thought with smooth assurance. “Yes, to make another warrior lie beneath you while having his ass is to debase him to something less than our eyes deem worthy.” Loki himself remains flint-eyed and cool-voiced even as Thor shifts, cheeks burning with unaccustomed shame. “But there are… _other_ things one might do. Solace one might take in a trusted friend, a known confidant.”

“You mean…” Never eloquent by nature for despite a long-ingrained schooling in courtly manner, Thor stumbles hard over his next phrasing. “…to bring off by hand?”

“There is that,” Loki agrees, cordial and clinical both as he crosses one leg over the other so that one slim ankle is balanced upon his knee. “But then, have you never placed your cock between a maiden’s bosom? Or between the white softness of her thighs, without seeking the cunt betwixt?”

Thor almost purples, and Loki tilts his head with all the critical curiosity of Muninn or Huginn about their divine task. “I…that is…”

Loki takes it as assent, shrugs. “Yet with even the latter there is always a chance,” he muses, and then gives a grin that one might only name as demonic. “Although that chance becomes next to nothing with another of your own gender.”

“And that brings…pleasure?”

Such willing blindness should not be a surprise amongst the warriors of the Aesir, but for whatever reason Loki finds it particularly galling in his brother, for all he is the most perfect of those people. “It is friction and heat and a warm willing body. What more do you need?”

The bewildered expression darkens. “And you… _know_ this. For certain.”

He but shrugs, careless and careful with the response in the same singular breath. “Yes.”

“ _Who_?”

Loki does not wince beneath Thor’s harsh grip, does not yet even try to break free. “It is not your concern.”

“Who has done this with my brother?”

The roar rips through his head as Thor hefts him to his feet, but Loki gives him little satisfaction more than a vague wince, a disgusted look. “Honestly, Thor,” he says, and raises one hand to rub his ear. “Even I haven’t capacity enough to remember _all_ those names.”

This time it is a berserker’s cry to arms that rips free of his brother’s throat; Loki is thrust back against the nearest wall, the action accompanied by the disjoined melody of shattering glass and overturned ceramic. But for all Thor’s strength, this is Loki’s domain. The wards, accustomed to letting Thor enter, become something else, something darker as Thor seeks to shake unrequested sense into his younger brother.

With such aid Loki is the only victor permitted. It is almost too easy for him to drive him back, to shove Thor down upon the wide windowseat across the chamber. Taking his place upon his closed thighs, knees flanking hips, again Loki bunches white-knuckled hands in his collar and learns so close Thor ought to be able to taste his words.

“You would impugn my honour simply for what brings me pleasure?”

“Yes!”

He might have expected nothing better, but it hurts all the same. Still he smiles, that brittle ever-persent mask. “But then what disturbs you truly, brother? Other men taking pleasure between my thighs? Or me taking my pleasure between theirs?” It takes a cruel curve now, a whetted blade set against the throbbing heat of an exposed artery. “Then again, is it their pleasure you begrudge them? Or mine?”

The great body surges up, goes nowhere. “Loki, get off me.”

His knees tighten, smile just as unforgiving. “I do believe I shall not.” It is not physical strength that holds Thor down, and Loki releases his grip upon his neck to trace a finger down the centre of his clothed chest, before then moving about two roundels in a lazy approximation of infinity. “In fact, seeing as you are so determined I learn something new, I think you shall do the same. To balance matters, you see.”

As the finger comes to rest about the rise of his crotch, Thor’s eyes darken. “Do not dare.”

“Trust me.”

His smile is sharp though his fingers remain careful, in tune with the light hum as he goes about his chosen task. They move knowing over the belt, easing the trousers down just low enough; Loki himself must shuffle himself backward, leather-clad behind moving smooth over muscle and skin.

It engenders a sharply intaken breath, something like humiliation while his half-hardness says something else entirely. But then that is no surprise to Loki. They’d been young indeed the first time he had felt his brother’s stiff length against his hip, sliding unintended into against the crease of thigh and groin for but fleeting second when wrestling in the training halls. Yet even as they’d grown older, even as they’d never acknowledged it, things had ever been this way between them.

Loki has always been very clever at dancing upon a knife’s edge. But sometimes it takes more skill not to stay balanced upon that silver neutrality, but simply just to fall.

“You can stop this little jest now. I think you’ve taken enough pleasure from it.”

“I’ve hardly taken any pleasure at all,” Loki returns, eyes upon his newest prize.  “And yes, I could give you a picture, draw you a diagram, write you a list of instructions, perhaps.” And he looks up, head tilted with rich irony. “But then I’ve been your brother all my life. I’m quite aware of the fact you learn best by…active tuition.”

In the same fluid motion he lifts his hips forward, and then grinds them down. The gasp wrenched from his brother’s throat is glorious victory indeed, echoed by the twitch of the half-hard prick as it stirs to a more profound hardness.

It would be so easy to reach down and take it in hard, to tame and release it both with but a squeeze of fingers, the drag of his thumb over the tip. He might even give over to the temptation of the taste of pearlescent pre-come upon his lips. Such action is nothing he has not considered before. By now Loki cannot hope to count at all how many times he has imagined his brother beneath him, hard and wanting, breath caught in the great swell of his chest while hands all but span his own narrow waist, Loki the jailer bound by the manacles of his own creation.

Still this is not quite the scene of his imagination; he is yet fully clothed, Thor with his tunic only hiked up to show little above his navel, while the trousers have been driven down almost to his knees. But it is enough. Sitting back, Loki allows himself to rub opened hands over the thick hard muscle of his thighs. He has seen his brother nude before, a thousand times that he can recall offhand and certainly more than that in truth. But never has he been allowed to _touch_ , to blaze a trail of fingertip over the tremble of taut muscle before skirting the warmth of the crease between thigh and hip; all fingers flare wide over the belly, as if to capture and hold close the sharp hitched breath they invoke.

“Loki.”

He does not look up from his work, eyes narrowed and fixed upon the gift he has at last given himself. “But I have no need of an unwilling student, when I might find a willing companion,” he says, light as fresh-frozen ice. “Yes or no?”

The tongue moves, but no sound emerges; it licks over dry lips, eyes almost comically wide. But Loki finds no humour in this, gives only a snort of mild disgust. Bunching one hand upon a thigh he pushes upward, returns to his bench and his disturbed work. The apparatus is still in place, undisturbed by the way they had roiled about the floor in a tangle of flailing limbs; fortunately there is reagent enough to begin the experiment anew, though Loki does not know if he has patience enough for the time it will take again to bring it as near completion as it had been before Thor had so casually ruined everything.

“Yes.”

So fixated is he upon his work, at first he does not hear. Then his thoughts catch up to his senses, and he jerks around. “Could you say that again?”

Thor’s colour is high, his cock all hard condemnation against his heaving belly. “ _Yes_ , damn you!”

Before he returns Loki palms a vial from the bench. The walk back seems to stretch time and space itself, perception narrowed to the shift of his hardened cock in the leather of his trousers, delicious friction that is nothing compared the heat and might it shall soon find.

The lean strength of his body does not betray him now, though it still takes his brother by surprise for all they had wrestled and grappled and fought both as children at play, and as adolescents training for war. His hard cock, glint with the oil now, seems to carry the scent of summer, as endless and golden as the presumed stretch of their near-immortal lives.

But like a shadow Loki moves over Thor, body cool for all the rising rush of blood. It pounds through his head with the insistent reverberation of a battledrum summoning him to war, pooling in his groin like a heated promise of end and release.

“You must do something for me.”

The confusion writ upon Thor’s face is as dear and precious as the brother himself. “What?”

“Keep your hands upon my waist.” As he speaks, Loki takes those hands, settles them where he wishes their pressure most. “All the time. You are not to touch yourself, or me.”

His face creases in deeper bewilderment. “Is this not about pleasure?”

“I want you to see the pleasure one might take from this,” Loki corrects, and draws back, just enough. “Therefore lie still, and _observe_.”

Loki then slips between him as he might slip between worlds, a silent shadow that exists simply because the sun does: there can be never one without the other. A startled indrawn breath marks Thor’s only audible response, his eyes wide and as uncertain as the half-drawn fingers against his trembling palms. But it is not for his pleasure, it is for his own good.

And if Loki takes his own pleasure in that, why, it is but due payment for service rendered.

His entire weight is supported now upon his arms. Such position holds their faces only moments apart, loosened hair falling forward like dark cast shadow. Thor’s eyes remain bright, as if lit from within; Loki jerks forward and with a startled grunt they fall closed. At last Loki allows himself a bitter smile. Thor has ever been the type to meet any and all challenge head-on. In this, it seems, such truth is to be made a mocking lie.

At first Thor holds himself uncertain, providing only warmth and the relaxed pressure of his thighs. But as Loki begins to move, instinct has him tensing, relaxing. Beneath such ministration the pleasure sharpens, grows taut. There is still something yet to be taken from this: his brother beneath him, thighs trembling, hips alive in rising rhythm. His own song of motion and movement is that composed of summers past, of notions conceived in daylight and birthed in darkness. To the melody of these fantasies had come the frantic movements of thin fingers over a hard cock beneath the blankets in a room that seemed always too big because when Thor was there everything seemed so small, dwarfed by his smile alone.

The tightening in his balls warns Loki that his release is upon him. Hard fingers still circle about his waist, Thor’s eyes closed as he breathes hard through his mouth. This is the ragged accompaniment of his voice without language, a song writ in a tongue older than Yggdrasil herself. Again Loki gives deep jolt of his hips, revelling in the promised ending of a cock held tight and close by the smooth muscle of powerful thighs.

But he does not give over to the pull of such sensation. Instead he pulls back, out, away. With a keen of startled loss Thor’s eyes open, hands tightening upon his waist. “Where…what…?”

The silver tongue is stilled though Loki’s body moves with eloquent purpose, spine arching. Eyes roll back, throat bared as a cry works free, and Loki feels the orgasm descend upon him with all the inevitability of a Valkyrie taking her sworn spoil from the battleground. Then a hand shifts and Loki’s eyes open as he curves forward, glaring down with fierce curse upon his tongue.

The wide, wondering eyes of his brother steal the sound quite away, even before his hand closes soft about his throat. It tightens the moment before Loki comes, his own hand about his cock as he whispers the only thing that still holds any meaning as the world collapses upon itself.

“ _Brother_.”

Thor jerks, cock flushed and heavy despite the fact neither of them have so much as bushed a finger over the veined surface. Loki’s hips move, a jerked circle, the cast of broken infinity. When he opens his hand, there is a pool of white upon his palm.

The straining, half-breathed silence between them speaks as fluently as any epic poem, for all his release has yet left him tense and coiled. It should end here. But Loki cannot do it. One hand rests upon his thigh, half-hearted restraint as the other moves to tattoo Thor with white desire; his trailing finger traces lines in the fashion of the tribal familial markings the Jötnar are born with. But even as he dips low, swirls over trembling muscle, Loki knows this is a different familial oath, a bond they were not born with but perhaps rather born _to_. He writes of unspoken things with the runes of no known language except this they create between them now, fresh dialect of a fraternity they’d never before dared change in such irreversible a manner.

The other hand ghosts over his abdomen. A shudder runs through Thor like a river undammed; below the twitch of his cock speaks of a current yet untapped. Loki does not touch it, fingertips caught in a lazy oval that skirts it close and near, a perverse massage comprised of promises never meant to be kept.

“Loki.”

“Yes, brother?”

The long back arches, muscles rippling as the great arms reach for him. “I would show you what I have learned.”

He should end it here. He should end it _now_ , while he yet has the upper hand. But Loki rises, shifts as if walking in a dream, eyes upon Thor until the last moment when he turns. This is the point of no return, even before he lowers his own trousers, even before he goes to hands and knees.

With head bowed, he lays his cheek upon the woven fabric and smiles only to himself. “Always the eager student, brother?”

“Of the physical, perhaps.”

Thor does not indulge in finesse, in foreplay; there comes only a brief grunt as he passes an oil-slick hand over his leaking cock, and then for Loki there is little more he can focus upon but the thick throbbing warmth forced between his thighs. Thor drives deep from the beginning, Loki’s body offering no resistance.

As Thor begins to thrust there comes the slap of heavy balls against his thighs. One finger blooms with sudden pain as Loki drives his teeth deep as if that might mute his desire, all fingers of the other hand fisting in the woven tapestry of the cushions upon the wide seat – and oh, this is not what their mother intended for her work.

_Or is it?_ Frigga speaks not of the weave she follows from her loom to the world beyond. Loki still knows well the pass of her knowing eyes between them – but he cannot think of her now, not with his brother between his thighs, the thick head of his cock grazing over perineum. There’s no urgency in it for him, still languid from his own orgasm, come upon his hands and now his back as Thor curves over him, groaning, lips pressed to his shoulder. The clothes between them are all the distance they have left, save for where they are naked together between their thighs and hips.

“Loki.”

He smiles, a hunter well-blooded. “Yes.”

“ _Loki_.”

A ruined sound, it moves harsh in the closed spaces between their bodies. But he has not yet released. In an echo of Loki’s own motions of moments ago Thor pulls free, and Loki feels the drag and loss. Yet the emptiness is fleeting, forgotten as his tunic is hitched up further over hips. With trousers bunched around knees his skin is laid bare to a pulse of warmth: once, twice, three times and then he loses count as it pools in the hollow of his bowed spine, drips over the curve of his ass.

Shuddering sensation shivers through him as broad palms work it into his skin, marking him as Loki had marked Thor. But he does not trace delicate line, does not mirror the branching ever-growth of Yggdrasil itself with spiralling root and spreading limb. Thor’s hands instead lie open, palms wide enough to take everything in his reach, before his sight.

In the thrall of such overwhelming need there can be no delicacy. Thor does not even pretend it, dipping his head low. This first kiss presses light upon the skin of his hip, the rasp of beard against his buttock. When Loki can muster no protest Thor grows bolder in this exploration, mouth trailing, the touch and probe of a curious tongue against the tremor of tensed muscle far deeper than he had ever planned to go.

“Thor.” It is meant to be command; instead it is a broken and bleeding appeal. “Thor, that is too much. This is not what I wish to teach you.”

“Is it not?”

In immediate answer Loki first draws back, and then he turns. His once-spent cock has begun to harden again, even before he takes in the sight of his brother with his own come caught in the golden stubble of his beard, eyes dilated, trousers gone completely now. Sweat-dampened hair forms leonine mane about his open expression, all love and longing and half-spent lust. Such trust lacerates deep into Loki’s heart, bleeding out even as he seeks to scour it clean with disdain and reserve, cauterising the wound when he knows not even the strongest dwarven thread might hold it closed.

“Here ends the lesson.”

Thor has never been a good student. “But I do believe you in need of revision,” he whispers, desire caught upon his humour as sticky hands catch Loki beneath his arms. His spirit screams a protest though his body allows himself to be hauled up. In this Loki is raised to his knees, arms draped about his brother’s shoulders while Thor looks up like a penitent to a god upon his perfect pedestal. His cock slides between welcoming thighs, and there they hold him tighter than even Thor’s hands about about upper arms. Loki is caught, a wriggling dozen-winged butterfly pierced and prone upon a diamond-headed pin.

“Loki,” Thor whispers, and he presses too close, too near; the stormborn eyes of silver-shot blue are too wide and too honest. Loki shakes his head with sudden terror.

“No.”

The kiss comes then, almost clumsy in force and damp desire. That really is too much, Loki knows; his heart aches with bitter gall for that which is not allowed. The teacher fails his own class with every moment Thor draws him deeper, drowning without air even as he closes his eyes against the surface and cares not for the loss.

 The jerk of Thor’s hips pulls and pushes him alike, though his bruising grip holds him close always. Loki’s hands drop low, cup about the working muscle of buttock; Loki can feel the tip of his cock peeking between them. In return Thor works him hard, his own prick caught between the wild press of their bodies, twitching in the welcome friction. His nose nudges under jaw, breathing hot and wordless save for the language of lust and longing and impossible boundaries left so far behind they might as well be beyond the Nine Realms.

With head thrust back and voice a ragged shriek, Loki comes hard between his brother’s legs. Thor, too, joins him but a moment later with a roar like summoned thunder despite the lack of light in this darkened secret place; trust him to never let Loki have one up on him, for even this one precious fleeting moment.

_We will never be equal._

But in this ending they lie together, tangled upon the soft weave of their mother’s handiwork – and in that, at least, Loki feels that Thor has fallen to his own level even if he might never rise to that of his damned beloved elder brother.

“If I found great pleasure in this,” Thor says, sudden in the stillness, “does that mean I have passed your master class?”

One long hand moves between them, quick finger pinching, twisting the skin of his skin before Thor can jerk away. “The passing grade is in _my_ pleasure.”

The gesture echoes distant childhood; Loki expects the response of old, where Thor will cuff him about the head or drag him into a headlock. Instead this is something only of an adult’s world, with the warm hand closing over his cock; Loki stiffens, in spirit as well as body, even as the smiling mouth moves against his throat, whispering where his brotherly hand so often rests. “Then I think I am your best student.”

He is not yet breathless enough that all words are beyond him. “Bold talk, for one who has no idea how many I might have invited into my classroom.”

“If I fail, I care not,” Thor says, face tilted upward, conspiratorial smile upon lip and embedded in voice. “I always have much to learn of you.”

So relaxed is he, that it is quite easy enough for Loki to brace hands upon his chest and thrust Thor upon the floor. “And I have lessons of my own to begin,” he says with cool grace, rising and reaching for his shirt in one fluid movement. “Go, practice your learnings elsewhere until I find this prophylactic for you.”

His brother remains an undignified heap, tangled limb and wild hair, eyes ridiculously wide. Yet he says nought as Loki goes about rearranging his clothing, and in time moves to do the same for himself. But the blunt fingers stumble, his brow deep furrowed. Loki can all but hear his heavy thoughts clanking like unoiled clockwork in his fool mind, can predict almost to the second the moment he dares speak aloud.

“I…”

It goes no further than that, and Loki looks to him with raised eyebrow. “Thor?”

For whatever reason he takes hope in that, finds it invitation again; his broad shoulders are set with the boldness of his words when he says: “I would do this again.”

“And I would not.” Crossing to the door, he opens it, drops low in half-mocking bow as he indicates the escape it provides them both. “Good night.”

Loki does not know whether or not to feel disappointment when Thor crosses without word. But he halts beneath the warded lintel, turns back with eyes blue and determined with perceived truth.

“Liar.”

The smile he wears is as false as his heart. “Is this something you only learned just this moment?”

“We are not done.”

“Of course not, we are brothers.” His step matches the lightness of his words as he sways close, lips but a second’s catastrophe away from those of his still brother. “But there is a further piece of advice I would give you.”

“Oh?”

The whisper shivers along his jaw, slipping true into his ear. “ _This is best done with those who cannot fall pregnant_.”

“Yes, I know that,” he says, impatient, “is that not but one reason why you and I…”

It has always been a great source of delight for Loki, to watch realisation break like frenzied dawn across his brother’s beloved face. His own smile is a wordless farewell, hand reaching up so he might close the door upon one last startled shout.

It vanishes as the wards strengthen enough to keep out even Thor’s pounding upon his chamber door. Loki stares instead at the broken glass, expressionless and silent, the congealed elixir shimmering like silver tears. Such half-meant threat won’t keep Thor away for long.

But perhaps it will be prove longer than Loki could ever hope to achieve alone.


End file.
